PROTOTYPE 3: The Octopus Librarian

The idea of the Octopus Librarian has been a fairly straight-forward journey, void of the twists and turns and back-tracking and dismantling that the Land and Sea idea is so rife with.

The idea began with Kerris creating the character. It had such appeal that when I was creating loose concept art for our ideas, the octopus librarian was one of the first and most developed characters I experimented with. Kerris had discussed this idea of the octopus frantically trying to organise a library, which sparked the idea in my head of having certain control keys for each of the octopus' eight tentacles, and how they could be used to organise books perhaps by colour or size. We liked this idea, as it was much more mechanic heavy than the rest of them, and seemed like a fun chaotic game that would be enjoyable to play.

Sid is the core developer of this prototype, and has documented his progress in programming it on his blog. I worked in tandem with him to develop a narrative plot to accompany the mechanic, finding the idea of the octopus librarian as a character very enticing.

Narrative Design

Whilst this idea was very fun, it definitely had no relation to our core message of community, but that didn't mean that it didn't have to. When I visualised the octopus, I saw it as a she, and a grumpy, anti-social creature who was intent on having a clean and tidy library. I saw an opportunity here for a character conflict reminiscent of fables that would give way to personal change and create a small, compact and compelling story. But I needed a character to conflict against.

After some thought, I decided I wanted to juxtapose the size of the octopus against something that seemed vulnerable, and that lead me to baby turtles, who are increasingly at risk due to light pollution that inhibits them from reaching the sea once hatched. It helps that they're incredibly cute, too.

I wanted to pit these characters against each other, and considering our preliminary ideas about the octopus organising chaos, I thought it was fitting that the little baby turtle was the one creating it. But I wanted the turtle to be a sympathetic character despite its messiness, and wanted it to have a positive changing effect on our heroine the octopus.

I began writing the story, and with these characters developed, it almost wrote itself, as good character-driven stories tend to do. The full story is available to read here, and depicts an anti-social octopus who starts a library so they can live a quiet and tidy life. Their world is then shaken by the baby turtle, who is grubby and makes a big mess of the library that the librarian has to clear up (the main mechanic of the game), but who has a great interest in reading stories, just like the librarian. The turtle starts to help clear up the library as time goes on, and the octopus allows him to read her favourite book. However, the turtle's lack of patience results in him ruining the book, and the octopus banishes him from the library. The octopus finds herself changed, however, missing the company of someone who cares about the things she cares about, and they reconcile when she realises that it's more important to be loved and in company than unloved in peace.

The prototype for the narrative can be found here.

Mechanics

Whilst Sid is developing the mechanics primarily for this prototype, I did have input into how they've changed over time. In the prototype that Sid has coded, the gameplay revolves around picking up coloured books and returning them to their corresponding shelves, as the little turtle swims around creating chaos. This is an instance in which the mechanic informed the story, but after I had prototyped the first draft, we had an opportunity for the story to influence the mechanic.

In a lecture given by James, we were looking at genetic algorithms in AI, the logic of which we had to apply to our own ideas. Instantly I drew a connection between an AI that gradually learns to improve at a given task and our turtle character. I thought it would be an interesting addition that in the section of the story when the turtle begins to help tidying, that his skills improve over time. He could spend a lot of time putting the wrong book on the wrong shelf, but gradually learn the right shelf for the right coloured book and then be able to help more efficiently. Whilst I might not fully understand the coding that goes alongside this, it might be a cool way to input another feature into the prototype.

As we developed these ideas, we realised we had a stronger leaning towards our land vs sea idea, so we stopped development on this prototype and focused more on that game idea.